life is happening to us

We'll start with the bad news, because I think it's less depressing to end a blog post with pictures of Ethan. Our poor kitty Andrew is a very sick cat. His kidneys are failing. We did an ultrasound on his abdomen and the vet found that he's had a pretty serious kidney infection. It's been there long enough to had scarred the tissue permanently so that they aren't functioning all the way anymore. He stayed at the vet for 3 days last week, coming home every night to sleep. While he was there, they kept him on a kitty IV and a kitty catheter in order to flush his system and clean out the kidneys a bit. He's taking antibiotics and is on a special prescription diet as well.
They left the IV in his leg every night, and he was supposed to wear a hood so that he couldn't get to it. When we could be with him and watch him closely, we took the hood off so that he could feel kind of normal again. But, as you can see, he still tried to get the band off.
The visits to the vet were traumatic for him and he came home sad and exhausted every night. He would walk around the house so slowly, and fall asleep like this every few steps. He didn't eat or sleep at all while he was at the clinic.
Cordelia has been a bit neurotic since this has been happening. The first day we brought Andrew back from the vet, she freaked out and attacked him as soon as she got close enough to smell him. Every year when we take the cats in for their checkups, they both go together and both get poked and bothered together, so this has never happened before. I think actually that this is the first time they have ever been apart. Oh, no that's not true. When Cordelia tore her claw out and had to go to the kitty hospital, Andrew stayed home. He's a sweety, though, and didn't attack her when she got back. Anyway, she freaks out whenever she gets near him now and so we have to keep them separated. We have 2 baby gates stacked up at the top of the stairs (2 because she jumps over just one) and one kitty stays upstairs and one is downstairs. We're trying to reintroduce them to each other gradually by swapping places daily and rubbing them both down with the same towel (to get her scent on him and his on her). So far there's no improvement. Climbing over/through the baby gates is difficult and I don't think we'll be able to keep it up much longer. If anyone has any advice, please share!
The good news is that the IV treatment seems to be working. On the 3rd day at the vet, they did his blood work again and the critical levels are much lower. They taught us how to do a treatment at home to get fluids into him called subcutaneous fluid therapy. We have an IV bag and a giant 18 gauge needle and we basically put the fluid under his skin. It's not a vein thing, the needle just goes under his skin on his back and we fill him up with a little camel hump. He absorbs the water and it helps keep his kidneys working as well as they can.
Poor little Andrew has been shaved in random places and poked every day since we took him in. His kidneys are never going to be well again, but hopefully we can do the treatment and keep him healthy for a long time. We feel hopeful about the whole thing because Andrew is still so young. There are tons of videos and stories online about other people's cats that use this treatment to help their kitties live better with CRF (Chronic Renal Failure). Andrew is only 5, and there are cats that are 17 years old that are benefiting from the treatment.
Rob and I have been meeting up for a weekly play date. Last week we went to This Is The Place Monument. It was super rainy, but it was still fun.

Here are the babies being patient (sort of) while they wait to ride the ponies. Rob is telling Johnathan to stop freaking out and that he needs to wait his turn.
Sweet little boy waiting for his turn.
Here's my beautiful niece, Colette, riding a pony. She loves horses! The pics of Johnathan on the horse didn't turn out.
The rain was fairly constant while we were there. We couldn't see much of the valley because of the clouds. It was pretty.
The day we went to the Monument, I decided to get Ethan dressed up. I've only just started putting pants on him since it got rainy and cold here. Up until then, he was just hanging out in onesies every day. But this is his first complete outfit--shoes and all.
He's definitely his parents' child, because he loved the shoes. He would stare at them and smile and kick his little feet. Of course, we don't really know what he was thinking, but we can project our love of shoes on him if we feel like it, that's what parents get to do.
This is the view of Ethan that I get when I carry him in his slings. He has such a sweet little face, and you can tell he loves us when he looks at us like this.
He's definitely got my nose. -sigh-

We've been watching motorcycle races at nights recently. Ethan no longer is happy to curl up on my shoulder while we watch, he wants to sit up next to Daddy and watch the races too. The pictures didn't really turn out, but you can get the idea of what he's doing. He stares at the TV just like us. It makes me feel a little funny that he watches it so intently. I feel the urge to take him outside to a park or something and make him run around (except that it's dark and he can't even sit up on his own yet).
Every morning Ethan and Brett have long conversations in bed about life and bodily functions and philosophy and the Beatles. They are both so cute!